SLLM (Single Lady Large Mortgage)

Sistergold

doingitanyway said:

Hello Sistagold, your stories about the foxes made me laugh and sympathise at the same time. I had a few years when the foxes took over my home as I worked away a lot and they moved in on my garden. Plus the back fence (not mine ) was broken down so they had easy access from another property where the garden was overgrown, although to be fair mine wasn't exactly manicured. I tried talking to the neighbour but he was an absent landlord so nothing changed.
To make matters worse one of my neighbours FED THE FOXES. I kid you not...So you can imagine the foxes felt all their Christmases had come at once! I even had a dead fox on my lawn twice!!!
Sometimes it isn't that someone doesn't care when fences are not replaced. It can be illness or in my case lack of funds. I had to prioritise paying the mortgage and there wasn't spare. Anyway once I had the money I built new fences of great quality. I even replaced the fence that wasn't mine (rather than start a battle) and the foxes couldn't get in. Peace and no poo. Heaven! I have been fox-free for a few years now.
I hope you get both situations resolved. For me the two were linked. 

Thank you doingitanyway
you are right both situations are probably related at the back due to broken fences. At the front though the foxes can just stroll in as it’s an open garden with lawn and parking area. They are also pooing on the lawn at the front. Will have to persevere to “register my presence to the foxes!”
I also generally just fix a fence even when it’s not mine if the neighbours are not doing it. 
xx

Moneyfordreams

The house at the back of us is getting renovated and after the builders removed the shrubs it exposed our house as there is only a 4ft wall. The plants on our side have covered it a bit, however I'm hoping they will sort it out their side before the autumn. If not we will do it.  

Sistergold

It’s really amazing how what we do on our own side of the property affects our neighbors. On my left side I think two of my neighbors are feeling “exposed” as I removed all the trees and hedges on that side. This has made my garden easier to maintain and also has made my garden bigger and made that side of the garden available for me to grow some vegetables. I must say even for me it has made it less private. I am not very fussy about that much privacy though. I am going to let my neighbor plant a tree or two if they wish, will see how that goes. 

skye_blue

Hi
Hope you and your family are well, ive had a bit if time off work so had some screen free time for a few days
I have a lovely neighbour on one side who takes the fence panels off every year and paints them on both sides, (mine and his)
I paint the other side which shares with a rental property, i asked and they said they weren't going to paint it even if i gave them the wood stain to do it, so ive had to leave it.  They are lovely so don't want to rock the boat but i don't think i should do it
On the money front ive sent £100 over with money from surveys and saved from car insurance
Ive got a bit more yet as my energy switch has completed so when i receive that i will send with the other survey money i have kept to one side,  its these little things that i hope will help me on my way
Enjoy your weekend

Sistergold

skye_blue said:

Hi
Hope you and your family are well, ive had a bit if time off work so had some screen free time for a few days
I have a lovely neighbour on one side who takes the fence panels off every year and paints them on both sides, (mine and his)
I paint the other side which shares with a rental property, i asked and they said they weren't going to paint it even if i gave them the wood stain to do it, so ive had to leave it.  They are lovely so don't want to rock the boat but i don't think i should do it
On the money front ive sent £100 over with money from surveys and saved from car insurance
Ive got a bit more yet as my energy switch has completed so when i receive that i will send with the other survey money i have kept to one side,  its these little things that i hope will help me on my way
Enjoy your weekend

Good morning skye_blue
Me and family are all fine thank you for asking. How are you? 

I am very happy to learn that you managed to send some money off on overpayment! Well done you! I know of a saying which goes “a teaspoon of sugar a day finished a sack of sugar”(translation from non English saying) so yes every little helps! Nothing though is ever little as really if you think about it if say you have a million pounds and you lost a pound you can no longer say you are a millionaire or that you have a million pounds! So you owed £68000 now you owe £67900 can you see how it’s looking better already?! Whatever you pay now when you retire who knows you might have paid it all even if not fully paid you will have more equity! Keep this up one day with all these efforts you will find that the figure owed will just look better as it shrinks! 

🥰👏🏾

Sistergold

Good morning ladies 🖐🏾

I hope you all had a wonderful week full of many female powered achievements? Well I would like to think that as laddies we can achieve a lot as long as we set our minds to it. 

I hope you have some screen time available this weekend and I was hoping that we could compile a list of what methods, tricks, we have used or read with interest, targets we have set which have all helped to make us able to overpay our mortgages. 

I am like most people where I have never really considered overpayments before until now with my current mortgage! I am so amazed by some young people who are overpaying already as I only thought of overpayments now in my late 40s. For me overpayments only crossed my mind because of my predicted age to finish paying my mortgage. If I don’t overpay I will pay this mortgage until I am 70years on the dot! 😼
How do they think I can be paying over £2k a month after my 60s? Well I asked for it I guess as my mortgage was high and flexibility is good so made the term as long as possible! Could have also gone interest only but I decided that I will be pushing it too far best be forced to pay something for as long as they will allow and then reduce it anyway I can. My mortgage is discounted variable for two years so can pay as much as I want to with no penalties. 

So ladies onto the quest for the weekend let’s come up with what we do to over pay. 

Overpayment methods

What I can think of 
1. set up with mortgage provider for a set overpayment to go by direct debit together with monthly mortgage payments (benefit is you don’t  think about it, it just goes and becomes part of your monthly expenses )
2. set up a standing order yourself through your bank account, (again the benefit same as above)
3. Call bank each month to make overpayments, (might cause lack of commitment I think if used alone?)
4. set up savings account to save and make one off overpayments as and when decided (can help as extra to emergency fund if need be before payment, might never be used for intended purpose since it’s just sitting there so need to be disciplined 🦾)

5. Round up your monthly mortgage payments or always keeping zeros at the end and overpay that way for example my monthly mortgage payment at present is £2098 so could round it to £2100 each month but 🥱 I would slap on another £50 or more for good measure if I was rounding up I think but hey the  idea is having a zero at the end? In this case I would pay £2150 thereby meaning over payments of £52 each month. 

6. Keeping your actual bank account balance or savings with zeros at the end? Is this ‘Tilly tiding’? So if in your operating account  you have £2188 depending on which method you choose tenths, hundreds or whatever you can send £8(balance becomes £2180)or £88(£2100) or £188 (£2000) towards overpayments you would also need to have decided when you do this daily, weekly or monthly? 

7. Pay off every year a set % of
a. actual mortgage balance 
b. Balance of original mortgage loan amount
c. Of purchase price
this is when we talk of 1% challenges etc 
8. Set overpayments based on when you want to pay off by. So if you want to be mortgage free within 5years you use mortgage overpayment calculator and find how much to overpay by to pay by a certain date! 🤞
9. overpay by a certain fraction of your monthly wage? 

10. Find a second job/business/hustle and dedicate all this to Overpayments 

11. Rent out a room/s in your house dedicate this to overpayments 
12. any unexpected cash goes to overpayments eg cash backs, refunds, discounts etc 
13. Any unused monies from your other expenses pots go to overpayments at the end of the month eg if you budget £409 for food and you only spend £309 that month the £100 left will go to overpayments

14. Every month/year rounding down your mortgage balance to nearest tenth, hundreds, thousands etc so if I have end of year balance of £473543 will pay an extra £3 to make it £473540 or an extra or extra £43 to make it £473500 or an extra £543 to make £473000 or an extra £3543 to make it £470000 ✍🏼💋


Of the above I will be using method 1, 2, 4 & 5
I would also like to personally challenge myself with strategy #14 
at the end of each year? I think that could present a nice challenge to end the year? 
Please ladies send me what other methods you have seen other people use and please tell me which ones you have used and how the overpayments method worked for you? 
@Also if anyone would like to join me at the end of this year to round down to some zero/s your mortgage balance? We can have an end of year tidy up 🧹? 

Sistergold

Dear Laddies 

This morning my brain is in overdrive as to how I can challenge myself and other SLLMs.(Single Ladies with Large Mortgages) 
So if you read previous posts I would like us to have an easy reference to how we can trick ourselves into making overpayments second nature! Just from above post I have decided to challenge myself to a monthly mortgage tidy up and an end of year sweep! 

Monthly mortgage sweep 🧹 challenge 
Choose which one is right for you each month and announce what you have done. 

1. 0 commitment Under £10 every month you save £10 check mortgage balance and you will now pay what you need to and make last digit zero so if balance is £473222 you pay £2 to make balance £473220 or go the extra mile, you then top up your saved £10 with £2 and pay £12 to make balance £473210 you then save £10 for next month. 
2. 00 commitment Under £100 every month you save £100 check mortgage balance and you will now pay what you need to and make last two digits zero so if balance is £473222 you pay £22 to make balance £473200 or you then top up your £100 pounds with £22 and pay £122 to make balance £473100 you then save £100 for next month. 

3. 000 commitment Under £1000 every month you save £1000 check mortgage balance and you will now pay what you need to and make last three digits zero so if balance is £473222 you pay £222 to make balance £473000 or you then top up your £1000 with £222 and pay £1222 to make balance £472000 you then save £1000 for next month 

Laddies you can see that this will really be interesting as each month you can do it differently so one month if what you need to pay to tidy up is close to what you save you just pay that so if you saved £100 and you need to pay £96 to round off that’s all you can decide to pay just that but if you need to pay £6 then you could then take £6 from your eating out or food shopping and pay £106 towards this challenge! 

Also every month you can move up in the challenge like one month save £10 next month £20 another month £100 etc? 

I HOPE MANY WILL JOIN ME IN THIS MONTHLY SWEEP 🧹 CHALLENGE! How many zeros do you want to commit to? 

For me I commit to Two zero sweep a month 00 commitment  so my working saving will be £100 or other multiples of £100

Sandyra

Of the above I will be using method 1, 2, 4 & 5

I would also like to personally challenge myself with strategy #14 
at the end of each year? I think that could present a nice challenge to end the year? 
Please ladies send me what other methods you have seen other people use and please tell me which ones you have used and how the overpayments method worked for you? 

Morning sistergold  I hope you are well?

Wow a very comprehensive list. 
I used method 2, I was looking at method 1 but as I am on a tracker, when the BOE goes up then so will my DD, so standing order works well for me. 5 and 6 go hand in and recently after reading Tilly's diary I try to do a combination of both. As a teacher, I do use 10 - tutoring gigs but as a non core subject - D&T, I only do it rarely and keep it below the threshold. I was hesitant of doing 11, but I had my older brother stay with me, he said he was staying for 4 months then ended up staying for a year.  After that I thought it wasn't too bad, so I have had always short term lets. In fact they have always ended up buying somewhere after I kept on going on about buying property and OPing. I have now started doing 12 - I have a Santander 123 lite account and a mortgage, main reason I opened the account was to maximise the cashback from the mortgage. Last month I decided to OP every cashback, compensation I had as it was technically money I hadn't planned for. I'll definitely being doing 14 as I want to reach the next LTV next year.

Sandyra x

Sistergold

Sandyra said:

Of the above I will be using method 1, 2, 4 & 5

I would also like to personally challenge myself with strategy #14 
at the end of each year? I think that could present a nice challenge to end the year? 
Please ladies send me what other methods you have seen other people use and please tell me which ones you have used and how the overpayments method worked for you? 

Morning sistergold  I hope you are well?

Wow a very comprehensive list. 
I used method 2, I was looking at method 1 but as I am on a tracker, when the BOE goes up then so will my DD, so standing order works well for me. 5 and 6 go hand in and recently after reading Tilly's diary I try to do a combination of both. As a teacher, I do use 10 - tutoring gigs but as a non core subject - D&T, I only do it rarely and keep it below the threshold. I was hesitant of doing 11, but I had my older brother stay with me, he said he was staying for 4 months then ended up staying for a year.  After that I thought it wasn't too bad, so I have had always short term lets. In fact they have always ended up buying somewhere after I kept on going on about buying property and OPing. I have now started doing 12 - I have a Santander 123 lite account and a mortgage, main reason I opened the account was to maximise the cashback from the mortgage. Last month I decided to OP every cashback, compensation I had as it was technically money I hadn't planned for. I'll definitely being doing 14 as I want to reach the next LTV next year.

Sandyra x

Afternoon Sandyra
Thank you for listing the OPing strategies you have adopted. Oh how I miss my Santander mortgage, that’s what I had in the joint mortgage with Mr Ex. Best mortgage I ever had, had the savings account which linked to mortgage etc. I could view balance online, make overpayments or withdraw money at the click of a button! Well its all in the past now and I now have to cope with a product which does not have any Online access at all! It’s with The WestBrom there is a back story as to why I could not get a mortgage with Santander after divorce but hey I will make this particular mortgage work one way or another and the story will be for another day. 
I am also really looking forward to strategy #14 which I will start this month end I really cant wait! #1, 2, 4 & 5 will also continue in the background.

❤️ Sistergold

sofarbehind

Great list sistergold, thanks. 
Over the last year I have added trying to improve my career as a second long term strategy. Reducing the cost of living is something I think we are all very switched on about (thanks Martin Lewis and these forums!), but that alone is a limited strategy. I'd love to earn more to be able to really get the mortgage done with and build a better pension. I've actually invested a lot of money in education to try and do this over the long term as I'm in a tough mid-career slump/dead end. I am also trying to build up new skills to broaden my options in addition to the masters. It's very time consuming and costly - it may not pay off. 

I would love to know your thoughts about building up your career in your late 30s/early 40s because you are obviously very successful and astute. Is further career progression on your mind too?